


the husband in the tower

by ConvenientAlias



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Gen, Post-Canon, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-16 19:55:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16501727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConvenientAlias/pseuds/ConvenientAlias
Summary: Arabella said that if Jonathan took too long coming home, she'd go fetch him herself. A year is too long. With the help of some friends, she's going to save her husband.





	the husband in the tower

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marina/gifts).



She gave him a year. A magician needed time to do his work. But he’d said, after all, that he didn’t want her to act like a widow. So she decided to act like a woman whose husband was very much alive and too busy off working to come see her. The obvious response of a woman in such a situation was to find her husband and remind him to come home.

Of course, the matter was not simple. She got herself some help. Emma Pole was in Venice lately, and she had certain magical texts she’d brought back from London—spare notes of Jonathan’s and Norrell’s which had been counted too brief to disappear with all the books. And there were the Greysteels, who knew nothing about magic really but were all too eager to help.

“This is all because of the faeries, right?” Flora asked.

“Yes,” Arabella said. “Well, one gentleman in particular. But he is now dead.”

“Mr. Strange said that to deal with faerie magic you had to be slightly mad,” Flora said. “Well. Quite mad, really. But it might be a good place to start.” She frowned. “I still don’t know how he drove himself mad in the end.”

Arabella shuddered. She’d heard, of course, the state Jonathan had been in before he finally succeeded in finding Faerie. The Greysteels had told her about his sojourn in Venice in great detail. It still took her aback, though, to think of her Jonathan in such distress. Even when he had appeared to her in the well he had seemed to be less upset than tired. That was how she liked to think of him—tired after a long day’s work but still happy, and happier to speak to her.

This magical madness had brought good fruits but she didn’t like it. Still, if Jonathan had gone so far for her…

“Madness is a very rough way of dealing with faeries,” Emma said. “It only causes you to see things at a slant. If you can figure out how to see things that way without it, it is much better. I have been able for some time.”

“We don’t have the spell to summon a faerie,” Arabella said. “That seems to be the bigger problem. And…I don’t think we would do much good summoning one. It might just cause more trouble.” She shook her head. “What we want is a way into Faerie, not necessarily a way to speak to faeries.”

“Mr. Strange said he had thrown open the mirrors,” Flora offered.

“Mirrors are a good start.” She’d seen Jonathan walk through them many times. “But it’s not so simple.”

She’d tried, once or twice, to imitate Jonathan’s antics, sliding papers through mirrors or reversing their letters, back when he was first experimenting. Eventually she’d had to give up. They said there were many magicians in England now, but one way or another, she still was not one of them.

Flora pursed her lips. She was leaned forward in her chair. Emma, on the other hand, was leaned back, and quite grave. She said, “A way into Faerie?”

Her look at Arabella was a reminder.

“The gentleman is dead now,” Arabella said. “I’m sure…” She hesitated.

“That everything will be quite safe?” Emma asked drily. “Must every magician make the same mistakes? I understand you want your husband back but if dealing with faeries is how you intend to do it, perhaps you had better wait a while longer and see if he comes back himself. There is danger in this.”

Arabella said, “He did not wait for me to come back. Nor did he allow you to save yourself, either.”

Emma flinched at the rebuke.

Perhaps she was too unkind. “I do not expect you to share in this danger. I can go alone.”

“You can’t go at all without help,” Emma said.

It was then that Arabella realized there was something about Emma that was not quite right. She was not intent, like Flora, on finding a solution to their problem. She barely seemed focused at all. Maybe it was paranoia but… “You know something, Emma?”

Emma met her eyes but didn’t answer.

“If you know a way into Faerie, you must help me.”

“I do not know a way.” Emma paused. “Stephen might.”

Apparently Emma had been in contact with Stephen for some time. Well, contact might not have been quite the right word.

“He drops by sometimes,” Emma said. “Not very often. Just occasionally.” She frowned. “He acts very different.”

“Is he in pain, being stuck where he is?”

“Only solemn as always. Actually, he seems quite relaxed.” She frowned even harder. “And he’s always wearing that crown. He’s even started wearing the oddest clothing—white suits and even green ones, just like that decadent… Well, it’s quite concerning. And the way he talks to me! I… Like I’m the servant, and he’s the master. Even the… Well, I suppose he was always a bit…”

“It’s good to know he’s happy,” Arabella said quickly. Whatever personal issues Emma and Stephen were having, she had no desire to get into them. They were probably much too complicated—the relationship between mistress and servant,   between two companions, and now between a king and a woman formerly under a king’s curse, all mixed heavily together. Let them sort it out. She really only cared about Jonathan. “You think he could take you—or someone—into Faerie?”

“I am never going into Faerie again.”

“But he could perhaps take me.”

“If you could convince him.”

“The next time you see him, you must speak on my behalf. Make my case.” Arabella clasped Emma’s hands. “Please, my friend.”

“It is foolish to want to enter Faerie.” Emma stood abruptly. “I’ll be going now.”

“Tell me you’ll speak to him.”

“I never asked to get embroiled in your magicians’ business. Why, why does it always come back to me?”

* * *

 

She sent letters to Emma after that, but Emma had stopped calling. So she began work alone. She read over the copied notes Childermass had sent. Most of them were incomprehensible without context. Hair and feathers when combined apparently could be very potent, but what exactly they did was left unsaid. There were notes concerning the chronology of the Raven King’s life, which were barely interesting, much less useful. Some of the notes were more about the production of his book than actual magic, and while they gave Arabella a pang of melancholy, they were even more useless than the rest.

Why was it, she asked herself, that Jonathan had to be so clever, and a magician? She would have been happy if he had taken up some normal trade. Then if she had to rescue him she could have been fishing him out of debt—at worst, had he joined the war effort, getting him out of some French prison—rather than summoning him from an entirely different dimension. Always she was out of her depth. It was unspeakably frustrating.

She sighed, leaned back in her armchair, and closed her eyes. In her mind she was in the parlor of their house in England. He was sitting across the room from her, absorbed in a book. In her mind she looked over at him, examining the angle of his neck and the way his hair fell over it. He never noticed how she gazed at him at times like these.

She heard someone clear their throat and opened her eyes. There, in front of her, stood Stephen Black in the flesh.

“Good evening,” Arabella said, “sir.”

“It seems that now that I wear a crown, people often call me…sir.” Stephen’s lips twisted slightly. He sat down next to her. “I have heard you are looking to bring back your husband.”

“You heard this from…”

“It is a matter that concerns me too,” Stephen said. “I did not know your husband well but he did not deserve what my predecessor did to him.” He frowned. “One of my greatest tasks of late has been undoing all the things that man did. I fear it will take my lifetime. Well, perhaps less than that…” He looked up from contemplation and cleared his throat. “Only your husband concerns you, I am sure. If you wish, we shall see what can be done.”

He offered her his hand and she took it.

“Will we walk through the mirror?” she asked.

“If you like,” he said. “There are many ways to Faerie, once you can see the roads. I took you there once before, if you remember, on a road much subtler, on a snowy night. Snow and rain can make a doorway. But mirrors are simpler.”

“Well, whichever you prefer.”

“Since your husband preferred mirrors, a mirror it shall be,” Stephen said. “Shall we?”

“Just a moment. I should tell Miss Greysteel…”

“She will want to come with you.”

Arabella nodded. “Can she?”

“It is not whether she can or cannot. She should not. My realm is as closed as I can keep it until it is more orderly.” Stephen gestured again to the mirror. “Shall we go?”

“She will wonder where I am. I’ll leave a note.”

Stephen allowed her to do so—she wondered at this. Faeries were generally more mysterious. But then, he was not fully faerie, and he was surely sick of people being forced to hold their tongues.

She left the note on her chair, took Stephen’s hand, and walked through the mirror.

It was more of a jolt than she’d expected. Not very graceful, more of a flip, of a jerk, as if the mirror were pulling her in. And once she was through, the place she was in was colder and darker than she had imagined, the air a little wet, almost hissing. It was not a very nice place. But it was, too, grand. They were on a set of stairs made of stone, spiraling down forever, branching off towards paths and arcs and ranges of cliffs. This was what Jonathan had first seen of Faerie, then, not the dazed balls of the gentleman. It was no wonder it had attracted him. He had always been like a little boy about adventure.

“Shall we go to your castle?” she asked Stephen.

“You are looking for your husband, are you not?”

She nodded.

“He is not there.” Stephen took her hand again. His fingers were warm and callused, and it struck her how different they were from the long, cold fingers of the gentleman. “I’m afraid we will have to walk another way, and it will be less pleasant. I’m glad to see you’re wearing sensible shoes.”

* * *

 

So they walked.

It was not a straightforward path. Sometimes Arabella would look back and see forks in the road she did not remember. Once she looked back and saw the path behind them drop off sharply, as if they had walked on the air.

“Focus,” Stephen told her, so she focused.

Despite her confusion at the landscape she thought she could discern one thing. Wherever they were going, it was getting lighter, though she could not find the sun in the sky. And there was more wildlife around, more grass growing in the cracks of the stone and trees sprouting up here and there, roots sinking into cliff-sides or sometimes almost blocking the path entirely. Above she saw a flock of geese flying in a V. Stephen shook his head sadly at the sight. “They won’t do well here,” he explained. “This is a better land for corvids. But with the paths open, all sorts of things are wandering in. I’m sure we’ll soon be swarmed with mice and rabbits and vermin.”

“I’m sorry,” Arabella said.

He gave her a tired look. “Well, there is little you can do about it. Though to be frank, it is almost entirely due to your husband. Perhaps when we get him out you can tell him to help me. He and Norrell gave me all knowledge of English magic, but it’s one thing to know something instinctively and it’s another thing to sort it out.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him.” She liked that he said when they got Jonathan out. She was less sure of their chances herself, and it was nice to have at least one person on this adventure think they were likely to succeed.

I am not a widow, she reminded herself. Jonathan was alive and he was closer than ever, and she would bring him back.

They walked.

“There he is,” Stephen said after a while. He pointed into the distance, where the path widened and went on for some ways. Arabella squinted until she could see a thread of black in the sky. She looked up, and could not find an end to it.

“It is a very tall tower,” Stephen explained. “Otherwise it would not trap them so thoroughly. It goes down, too. And they’ve found themselves unable to leave it. It no longer follows them or moves—they’re trapped.”

“How dreadful,” Arabella said faintly.

They walked closer and closer. It was hard to see what was inside the dark tower. Stephen told her there was a building, but all she could see was void. The thread became as thick as a piece of yarn, then like the size of a baseball bat. At last they came upon it, and it was many yards across. Arabella reached out and touched its edge, but just as she got used to the tingle of it, thicker than fog but too thin to be anything else, Stephen snatched her hand back.

“I do not think you should go in there,” he said. “One can become easily trapped. Even I have only gone in very briefly. The magic is unstable, but that only adds to its malevolence. It clings to your husband and to everything it sees as his. You do not want it to cling to you.”

“What am I supposed to do then?” She had thought she would be going in and getting Jonathan out, or at worst, going in and staying with him to share his fate. In sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer, for all of his days—that had been her vow, and she intended to keep it. Now she was not even allowed to join him.

“As I said, it is unstable,” Stephen said. “You felt how it vibrates. It is ready to burst or collapse. I’d rather have it collapse. If it bursts, it will wreak a great deal of destruction on this realm.” He smiled grimly. “You see, I am not entirely altruistic.”

“It seems to me you are magnanimous enough in taking this realm in your hands and trying to fix and protect it,” Arabella said. But her mind was not on Stephen’s troubles. They would have to destroy a spell of the gentleman’s? But his magic had always seemed to her far too powerful for that.

“The spell is based around Mr. Strange,” Stephen continued. “It claims him, body and soul and life, as its right, in exchange for the favor the old king did for him. If we can challenge that claim, the spell will break, and hopefully it will dissolve rather than shatter.”

“And how to challenge the claim?”

“I do not know,” Stephen said bluntly. “I have all English human knowledge of magic, but faerie bargains are tricky. Formally, there should be little. But I thought of the legend of Tam Lin.” He gestured to her. “Love can often do what logic cannot.”

“So I save my husband with my love?”

“I’ll admit it is a flimsy hope. But I have always thought you very capable.”

Arabella took a deep breath. “Very well.” At least, she thought, her love was something she had in abundance, even if it was a bit more wishy-washy than magic ought to be. Norrell, she thought, would think this sort of thing uncivilized. Certainly he would not approve.

“Here,” Stephen said. He stepped behind her. “You will have to speak to it,” he said. “It has a voice of its own. Inside you can hear it.” He shuddered. “Let me help you.”

He put his hands over her ears and all awareness of the outside world faded away.

* * *

 

All around her was blackness. She was not in the blackness. But it was, in a way, in her. And it whispered.

“Who are you, little girl?”

“I am a woman,” she said. “I am come to claim my husband.”

A laugh, breathy as the gentleman’s had been. The laugh of a man who had spent hours dancing and would spend hours more, whose amusement was both wild and shallow.

“You have no husband here.”

“Jonathan Strange is my husband,” Arabella said firmly. “You have him, and you should not.”

“You have no husband. Jonathan Strange is married to a moss oak, and the moss oak is dead and lies in the ground. He has no human wife.”

She could feel the blackness swirl around her. Smoke, cloth. It had no smell, yet it  suffocated her. She focused on the sensation of Stephen’s hands on her ears, grounding her. Careful. She balanced on the edge of the void, she knew. She could not let this spell absorb her.

“I gave him vows.”

“He gave you away.”

She swallowed.

Tam Lin and Janet had not been married, had they?

“You have my best friend,” she said. “The boy I knew since I was young. You have the man I gave my virginity. You have the man whose house I managed, whose books I bought. You have the man whose book I illustrated.”

“So?” the blackness whispered. “He owes me.”

“He owes me more,” Arabella said. She realized, when her voice echoed, that she was screaming. “You gave him a trinket, but I gave him everything! He owes me! He is mine!”

The blackness growled at her. It surged against her skin, prickling and biting and eating at her. She yelled again, wordless in her anger. Because she was angry. She had thought herself lonely and determined and in mourning, but none of that, she saw now, was at the core of her. She was angry. The gentleman had taken from her, and he had no right.

And then, in static bursts of gray, the blackness faded. Arabella felt something pressed against her. There was something in her arms. She squeezed it, eyes closed, and felt the fabric of a familiar jacket, the muscles of a familiar back.

“Do I dream?” a voice rasped in her ear.

“My love,” she said, “I’m here. I told you I would come for you.”

She opened her eyes and saw the look on his face. He was not as neat as he had been in her vision in the well. He had not shaved in some time, and his eyes were wild and unbelieving, like they used to be when he woke up in the night choking back words of corpses come to haunt him. She did what she always did at those times, and kissed him gently on the lips.

* * *

 

The most bewildered person in all of this was Gilbert Norrell.

“I am not entirely sure I follow you,” he said to Stephen.

Stephen had just finished explaining his idea of Arabella claiming Jonathan. They were all sitting on the path, Jonathan sitting almost in Arabella’s lap for how close they were and how tightly she embraced him.

“What do you not understand?” Stephen asked.

“I can see how you saved Mr. Strange from the darkness, but how me? Surely the spell was attached in some ways.”

“It seems the spell regarded you essentially as a hanger-on, like one of Mr. Strange’s belongings. If it lost him, it lost you too.”

“So Norrell belongs to me, and I belong to Arabella,” Jonathan said. “You are a woman with a great deal of power, my dear.”

Arabella smiled. “Well, we can’t all be magicians, but we can all try our best.” She kissed him again. How delightful, to kiss him! To have him there in her arms to kiss whenever, however, she liked.

“You should thank Mr. Black, though,” she added. “Or…his Majesty?” It occurred to her his title of king deserved perhaps more respect than she had been giving it.

“If that is what you wish to call me,” Stephen said. “I count myself nameless, these days.”

“I do thank you,” Jonathan said. “Goodness knows Mr. Norrell and I were making little enough progress. Sorry,” he said, when Norrell gave him a wounded look.

“No progress at all, after all that studying. A year’s work to waste. And regarded as one of your belongings!” Norrell’s brow furrowed. “Not that I’m not happy…”

“If you wish to put your magical talents to use,” Stephen said. “There will be a great deal for you to do in the days to come. Both here, in Hope Reborn, and in England.”

Jonathan started. There was a glint in his eye. “England! I had almost forgotten it existed. All I could think of was getting out of there, and…” he glanced back at Arabella. “I should rather like to see England again.”

“I would rather like to go there with you,” Arabella said softly.

Stephen stood up. “Right, then. It is about time you all leave Faerie. But Mrs. Strange, you owe me a favor.”

Jonathan looked at him sharply.

“He means for you to repay it for me by helping him regulate the doors,” Arabella said quickly. “Nothing uncouth.”

“Good.” Jonathan put his arm around Arabella. “I will be happy to do so, then. But let us be civilized about these bargains. I have had about enough of wild magic.”

Arabella rather doubted that would hold true for long. Jonathan always said he was ready to settle down, done with adventure, and he never quite was. But she hardly cared anymore. She had him back, at least, and any further adventures he undertook, she told herself, she would make sure he came back safely.

“Come then.” She put her hand in Jonathan’s and they followed Stephen down the path. “The Greysteels will be expecting me back for dinner. I hope they’ll have cooked enough for five instead of three. Six if you’ll join us, your Majesty.”

“For the evening it would not be amiss,” Stephen said. “We’ve done a good day’s work, after all.”

Jonathan smiled. “You must tell me how you like Venice, love. I often thought of taking you through its streets. Ah…I will have to buy you another dress now.”

“So you will,” Arabella said. “So you will.”

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly this fandom, this ship, really makes me want fix-it fics. Because damn it, someone needs to RESCUE JONATHAN STRANGE. And Arabella does have that line about going and bringing him back.  
> It would probably take more effort than this but. I'm an optimist.  
> Anyways, marina, I'm super glad you were okay with me adding Stephen because I love love Stephen and if you're saving someone from Faerie in post-canon, you gotta have him on your side. You just gotta.  
> Hope you enjoyed :) Thanks for the lovely prompt!


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